


the misadventures of jeremy and michael: the not very professional ghost hunters

by carefulren



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 10:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13385820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carefulren/pseuds/carefulren
Summary: the one where Jeremy accidentally cuts himself on an old nail while exploring a haunted house with Michael, and he ignores it until he's really bad off and trapped in a basement with Michael and a ghost





	the misadventures of jeremy and michael: the not very professional ghost hunters

Jeremy and Michael pause before a large, wooden basement door that’s splintered at the top and scratched at the bottom. Michael moves the camera closer toward the door, focusing the lens to the scraped marks at the bottom that look almost like nail scratches.

“So, this is where she was murdered,” Michael says as he crouches down, one hand thumbing along a particularly jagged scratch mark as the other holds the camera steady.

Nodding, Jeremy crosses his arms as he glances at the door with a nervous eye. “She was technically killed in here, right?” He starts, pulling his gaze away to shift around the dark, dusty kitchen that looks like an old set piece from a sitcom of the 1940s.

Michael hums in agreement as he gets to his feet and tries the doorknob, brows shooting up when it turns with his wrist. “She tried to run to the basement to hide,” he starts, toeing his boot against the scratch marks. “But, the killer caught her and killed her in here before tossing her body in the basement.”

“Our theory—” Michael starts as he tests the first step leading to the basement. It creaks under his weight but holds steady, and he can’t help but breathe out a low sigh as he motions for Jeremy to follow. “— is that her neighbor’s father wasn’t happy with her seeing his son.”

Jeremy shines the flashlight on the steps as he and Michael creep down the stairs. “But no evidence was found against the neighbor’s father.”

“It was a clean scene,” Michael adds as he steps off the last step onto the rough basement floor and turns to make sure Jeremy is still behind him. “So, no arrest was ever made.”

“And that’s why we’re here,” Jeremy says with a hint of a smile when Michael pans the camera on him.

“Yeah,” Michael says, moving to pan the camera around the cold basement. “We’re here to reach out to Jane Smith, to try and contact her to see if we can bring light to who murdered her.”

“As always,” Jeremy says when Michael brings the camera back toward him. “Replication is not recommended.” He arches his brows before Michael turns the camera to himself.

“Right, don’t do what we do, you guys. And, I mean you, Rich. Stop trying to break into that haunted asylum. You’re going to get in trouble. You date the law.”

Jeremy breathes out a huff of a laugh, his nerves briefly smoothing down to a dull twist in his stomach as Michael turns the camera back to the room while Jeremy goes to stand beside him, moving the flashlight about to give the viewers a good look of the room.

“Should we?” Jeremy whispers when silence falls between the two. There’s something about the room that feels off; the air feels a little heavy and unstable, and he sucks in a quiet gasp as Michael nods beside him.

“Jane,” Michael starts, voice breaking through the weighted air. “If you’re here, can you tap on the wall to let us know?”

This is the part Jeremy hates, the suspense, the silent waiting to see if the ghost will comply or not. A tremor shoots down his spine as he moves off to the side, giving Michael some space to call out to Jane. He drops against a cold wall, with a large bookshelf to his right, and shines the light on Michael’s back.

“We just want to talk,” Michael continues after a few moments of silence. “We’ve read about your murder—”

A loud bang sounds from upstairs, and Jeremy jumps and loses his footing until he’s falling to the right, arm grazing against something sharp sticking out of the bookshelf as he topples to the floor.

“Shit!” Michael curses, voice almost breathless and laced with a newfound excitement as he turns to see Jeremy pushing up on trembling arms. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy mutters, wincing as he glances down to see a trickle of blood staining a tear in his shirt on his arm, right before his elbow. “That scared the hell out of me.” He adds, taking Michael’s outstretched hand to be pulled to his feet.

“Same,” Michael says, almost distracted, as he glances toward the stairs. “We need to go see what that was.” He’s already starting up the steps, and Jeremy takes a moment to catch his breath and grab his flashlight rolling on the floor by the bookshelf.

On his way back up, he spots a rusted nail sticking out from a wooden panel of the bookshelf, and he swallows thickly as he glances down once more to the cut on his arm. It stings as he prods at it lightly, but any worried thoughts regarding it are stopped short by Michael calling out to him from the kitchen.

“Jer, you’ve got to see this!”

Dreaded words, Jeremy thinks as he climbs up the steps quickly, free hand gripping the banister tightly. When he enters the kitchen, he stops in his tracks as his eyes blow out impossibly wide. On the floor, there’s metal cooking sheet that’s standing straight up with no support.

“What the fuck?” His words are trembling along a harsh whisper, and he moves to stand behind Michael, who is crouching down to get a better shot of the pan.

“How is it just standing up like that?” Jeremy asks, breaths coming out sharply.

“Not sure,” Michael admits. He smooths his hand along the floor around the pan to see if there’s any dips, any slots, anything that could keep this pan upright, but his palm only glides along a smooth, flat surface. His heart is thumping in his chest, excitement bleeding out to wide eyes that can’t seem to take enough in, and he raises his hand to the pan. His fingers ghost across the cool surface, but when he pushes on it to make it fall, his camera goes dead in his hand, and behind him, Jeremy curses loudly, voice ringing over the echo of the pan falling, when the flashlight cuts off.

“Okay,” Michael draws out as he gets to his feet. “That was weird.” He presses a few buttons on the camera, but he can’t get it to come back on, and based on the frustrated grunts from Jeremy, the latter is having similar luck getting the flashlight back on.

“We should go,” Jeremy finally decides, feeling unnerved as he looks past Michael to the pan on the floor.

Nodding, Michael breathes out a sigh, still slightly reeling from the events. “We’ll come back,” he decides as he leads Jeremy out of the house and back to his cruiser.

Michael’s excited chattering fills the silence while the two pack up their things in the trunk. Jeremy’s quiet, only smiling and nodding along with what Michael says, and the quiet remains as he slips into the passenger seat, staring with furrowed brows at the house as he leans his head against the window.

“Hey,” Michael starts quietly once they’re on the interstate back to their apartment. He places a hand to Jeremy’s knee, pulling the brunet’s focus toward him. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy breathes out, cupping one hand over Michael’s. “Just tired.”

“We’ll rest up,” Michael says, flipping his hand to lace his fingers with Jeremy and offering a tight squeeze. “We’ll take a few days, do some more research, then come back.”

Jeremy only offers a nod and drops his head against the window once more, keeping his fingers tightly intertwined with Michael’s as he drifts off against the deep lull of the car engine.

 

*****

 

It’s four days until Michael and Jeremy return to the murder house of Jane Smith with new flashlights and a fully charged camera, even though both know the sudden demise of their equipment a few days before wasn’t from a lack of charge and bad batteries.

Michael’s chatting animatedly into the camera about their new findings as the two walk into the house, with Jeremy lingering a little behind, his leg muscles struggling to walk against the heavy veil covering his body.

He’s been feeling a little off since he and Michael first returned home from the house, but the off feeling has been growing progressively worse in the following days. He’s been feeling exhausted, even after a full night’s sleep, and his right arm is throbbing just as bad as his head. He’s chilled through, has been for two days now, yet he has to keep wiping sweat from his temples. And anytime he puts pressure on the band-aid over his cut, whether that be from putting on a jacket or brushing against a wall, sharp, burning pain shoots up and down his arm.

It wasn’t until this morning that he considered an infection; it was an old nail after all, but Michael seemed so excited, so eager to get back to the house to help Jane Smith in anyway he can, that Jeremy couldn’t take that from Michael, so he downed some ibuprofen and got ready to go.

“The pan’s gone.”

Michael’s voice pulls Jeremy from his thoughts, and he blinks slowly and glances to where the pan once was. He shines his flashlight around the room, searching for it, and when he moves the beam of light toward the ceiling, he sucks in a sharp gasp that has Michael quickly whipping around and aiming the camera toward where Jeremy is looking.

Lying flat against the ceiling is the pan, stuck as if glued there; though, both know that no one came to the house since their last trip.

“What the hell?” Michael breathes out along a quick whisper as he moves until he’s standing directly under the pan.

“Don’t stand under it,” Jeremy urges as he moves his flashlight slowly over the ceiling, hand freezing and body going ice cold when he spots a series of knives, with the blades sticking down toward the floor, lined along the ceiling, not far from the pan.

“Michael,” Jeremy whispers, voice shaking as hard as his body. He can’t keep his hand steady, but even with the shaking light, Michael still sees the knives with wide, curious eyes.

“Holy shit,” he mutters, moving closer to the knives but not standing under them. “How—”

A booming thump from the basement has both boys whipping toward the wooden door with harsh gasps. Jeremy’s heart is hammering against his chest like a jackhammer drilling into rock, and his breath catches in his throat when Michael starts toward the door with a sharp smile.

“Michael—”

“We have to go check it out,” Michael starts, already pulling the door open. “What if Jane is trying to communicate with us?”

“With loud bangs and knives on the ceiling?” Jeremy hisses out as he stumbles after Michael. He’s surprised to find his vision wavering, and he grips the banister until his knuckles turn white as he breathes through the sudden onset wave of dizziness.

It takes a solid minute until he can start down the steps without risk of falling, and when he reaches the bottom, he shuffles over to Michael, who’s standing in the middle of the room with a wide smile. “Michael?”

“She’s here,” Michael says, voice hushed but laced with an obvious hint of excitement. “I can feel it.”

Frowning, Jeremy can feel a chill in the air, an unnatural chill that mixes with the ice already coating his limbs. His muscles start trembling with shivers as he shines a shaking beam all around the room while Michael starts talking.

“Jane—”

The door leading back into the kitchen slams before Michael can get out another word out, and both boys jump and whip around to stare at it with gaping mouths and wide eyes. Michael starts up the stairs with Jeremy close behind, but when Michael goes to turn the knob, it resists against his hand, and after a minute of trying to turn it, a sharp knife pierces the wood, stopping only inches from Michael’s face.

“Shit!” Michael jerks back, and Jeremy has to brace against the banister to keep the two from toppling down the stairs.

“Are you okay?” Jeremy questions quickly as he peeks over Michael’s shoulder to see the knife. “Holy shit.”

“Hold this,” Michael mutters, handing the camera over as he drops both hands to doorknob. He jiggles it and lifts his other hand to bang against the door. “Who’s out there?” He shouts, but his words are met with two more knives that just barely miss his hand.

Jeremy stumbles down a step and urges Michael to come with him. “Michael, stop. Please. Before you get stabbed.” His voice is shaking, matching his arms and legs, and Michael obeys, turning to follow Jeremy down the steps.

“I think we’re stuck,” Michael mutters, eyeing the door with a new set of nerves as a shudder shoots up his spine. The room is still impossibly cold, and he still has that unnerving sense that someone’s here, waiting and watching his and Jeremy’s every move.

Jeremy’s heart skips a beat and he stumbles over to an empty space of wall, sliding down it until he’s hitting the floor with a soft thud. The camera trembles in his hand, but he keeps it aimed at Michael, following Michael’s sudden pacing.

“Michael—”

“I still think she’s here,” Michael mutters. “It still feels like she’s here.”

Jeremy’s stomach twists uncomfortably, and he draws his knees to his chest, curling in on himself as if to come off impossibly small. The movement brings a spike of pain down his arm, and he swallows thickly, watching with heavy eyes as Michael comes to a stop in the center of the room.

“Jane?” Michael starts, voice shaking slightly. “Are you here?”

For a moment, the only sound to fill the room are the stuttered breaths from Michael and Jeremy, but then a brush of icy air whips around the room, bringing with it one, solid whisper of a word.

_“Here.”_

Jeremy’s entire body goes rigid, and one, slow look toward Michael shows the latter is, too, frozen in place. “Did you—”

“Yeah,” Michael mutters, too afraid to move. “I heard it.”

For two minutes, neither boy moves or talks, but Jeremy can feel the temperature plummeting by the second, and he’s shivering hard after a bit, teeth clacking together loud enough to pull Michael’s attention toward him.

“Jer?”

“It’s f-freezing in here,” Jeremy chatters out, pulling his knees closer to his chest with a wince as the movement pulls against his cut.

Michael moves toward him with a slight frown, already shrugging out of his jacket. He can feel the creeping chill, but Jeremy looks worse off. Even in the low light from only one flashlight, Michael can see how pale Jeremy looks, and he’s shaking hard enough to have Michael wincing in sympathy.

“K-keep your jacket,” Jeremy tries, but Michael ignores him and crouches down to drape the large red jacket around Jeremy’s shoulders.

“You seem like you need it more right now,” Michael mutters, but when he moves his hands down Jeremy’s arms, as if to bring back a sense of heat, Jeremy hisses and pulls away, leaving Michael freezing on the spot.

“Jeremy?” Michael starts, feeling an uncomfortable twist in his stomach.

“It’s n-nothing,” Jeremy starts, breaths coming out too quickly for Michael’s liking. “I have a c-cut on my arm, and it hurts.”

“Can I see?” Michael asks, keeping his voice steady despite the different sense of fear threatening to take hold.

Jeremy shakes his head, but Michael ignores him and offers large, pleading eyes, enhanced by his glasses, until Jeremy’s holding out his right arm with a sharp wince.

“Hold the flashlight up for me?” Michael asks as he carefully rolls back layers of sleeves to get to the cut. His heart is already trying to leap up his throat when he spots how red and swollen Jeremy’s arm is, and when he finds the band-aid, he very slowly pulls it off despite Jeremy’s whimpered cries.

“Fuck,” Michael spits out sharply. The wound is bright red and burning hot, and it’s leaking out an off-colored pus. He spares a look to see that Jeremy has gone frighteningly pale, and he reaches a free hand out to Jeremy’s forehead, heart bursting in his chest at the worrying heat.

“Fuck,” he repeats as he slowly smooths the band-aid back over the cut. “It’s infected,” Michael mutters as he gets to his feet and eyes the door. “When did you get this?”

“F-four days ago,” Jeremy answers with a breathy sigh. “Last time w-we were here.”

“Fuck,” Michael hisses out once more as he storms toward the stairs, with the only thought that he needs to get Jeremy out of here occupying his mind.

“Michael, wait!” Jeremy tries to stand, but the floor beneath him tilts, and he falls forward, dropping onto his hands and knees with sharp pants as Michael lifts a fist to the door.

Before Michael can pound on the door, a second blow of icy air brushes along the room, bringing with it a whispered _“don’t”_ from the same female voice the two heard before. Michael freezes, fist still raised and only inches from the door, but slowly, he drops his hand back to his side and whips around to see Jeremy looking at him with impossibly wide eyes.

“She doesn’t want us to leave,” Michael says as he starts down the steps, moving back to Jeremy on shaking legs. “She’s keeping us in here.”

Jeremy moves with Michael’s hands when Michael helps him back against the wall. He’s still shaking hard and panting, and he feels like that attempt to stand took what little remaining energy he had. Still, his hazy mind is slowly piecing together parts of some scrambled puzzle.

“Or,” he starts, wincing slightly when Michael readjusts the jacket back over his shoulders. “She’s k-keeping us away f-from something out there.”

A gust of icy air blows around the two, but no words come. Michael moves to sit beside Jeremy against the wall, their legs brushing against each other as they slowly realize their situation.

“If that’s true, we still have to get out somehow. You need a hospital.” Michael glances at the camera still recording on the floor; he briefly wonders why he and Jeremy decided to start this, to start investigating unsolved supernatural tales, but his thoughts are cut off when Jeremy brings up what might be the most brilliant idea of the night.

“Can you call J-Jake?”

Michael’s quick to slip his phone from his pocket. Of course he can call Jake. Jake’s on the police force, and he’s only stationed twenty minutes out. It’s better, Michael thinks, to call Jake as opposed to calling 911 because most cops don’t really believe in the supernatural, at least not any of the ones he and Jeremy have dealt with in the past.  

He starts his phone, thankful to find a signal, and quickly thumbs through his contacts until he’s pressing on Jake’s name, breathing out a sigh when Jake answers with a causal greeting.

“Jake, I need you to bring a team out to the old Jane Smith house.” He pauses before interrupting Jake’s thought. “Yes, the haunted one. Listen, Jeremy and I are trapped in the basement, and we need help now.”

He rakes a hand through his hair when Jake starts going off on a tangent about how the ghost hunter stuff is stupid, but Michael interrupts him with a loud sigh. “Can you come? Maybe bring an ambulance?”

On the other line, Jake’s tone goes serious, and Michael can hear rustling sounds. “It’s Jeremy,” Michael answers when Jake takes a second to breathe from the firing questions. “He’s got an infected cut, has had it for four days now. He’s burning up.”

Another sigh slips past his lips when Jake agrees to pull a team together and get a couple of his EMT friends to follow them out, but before he hangs up, Michael catches him. “Wait, don’t bring Rich, okay? And be careful. I don’t know what’s on the other side of the basement door.” The last sentence is met with a grim “alright” before Jake hangs up.

“He’s coming,” Michael mutters along a breath of relief, and Jeremy drops his head against Michael’s shoulder with a hushed “thank god.” Michael tries not to focus on the heat of Jeremy’s forehead pushing past his shirt, but it’s too hot, too worrying. His stomach twists, and he moves one hand to lace his fingers with Jeremy’s.

“Don’t fall asleep, okay?”

Jeremy only hums in reply, unable to keep his eyes open from a hefty weight of fatigue crushing against his shoulders and practically pushing him unconscious. He tries, though. For ten minutes, he tries to stay awake, blinking slowly when he feels himself drifting, and trying to focus on Michael’s voice as Michael talks into the camera, laying out their situation for their viewers. But, he’s frozen, exhausted, and he nods off after another ten minutes, just as the faint sound of the front door being kicked open echoes softly into the basement.

“They’re here,” Michael mutters along a rush of relief, but when he cranes his neck to look to Jeremy, his entire body goes tense. “Jeremy?” He tries, pushing the brunet off his shoulder and shaking him, but Jeremy is limp and burning under his palms.

“Fuck,” Michael hisses out. He leans Jeremy against the wall and struggles to his feet, shaking, almost frozen muscles protesting from the sudden movement. He stumbles to the bottom of the steps and sucks in a sharp breath.

“Jake!”

He’s gripping the banister, breathing heavily and shaking all over, but after a few moments, the basement door is kicked in, and Jake is there, with his gun and flashlight raised. A brush of icy wind whips past Michael, all the way up the steps to blow past Jake, leaving Jake shuddering as he looks over his shoulder before meeting Michael’s eyes.

“What the fuck happened here?”

“I don’t know,” Michael admits. “Do you have the EMT? Jeremy’s unconscious.”

Nodding, Jake yells for a Christine over his shoulder before he bolts down the steps with the EMT and a few other team members close behind.

The next few minutes are a whirlwind of lights, shouting, and movement, all that Michael can barely follow because his mind is so focused on Jeremy. Before he knows it, he’s sitting in the back of an ambulance with a blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders. He can hear Christine, the EMT, shouting for someone named Brooke to drive faster, but it sounds faint, almost distant, as he keeps his eyes locked on Jeremy’s listless form. Everything starts to blur into a whirl of muted panic around him, until Christine is suddenly in his face, patting him lightly on the cheek.

“Michael? Hey, Jeremy is going to be just fine, okay? I need you to stay with me.”

Nodding, Michael forces his lungs to take in measured breaths as Christine moves back to work on Jeremy.

 

*****

 

“You sure you want to watch this now?” Michael asks as he fiddles with the laptop. In the two days Jeremy’s been in and out of consciousness in the hospital, Michael spent his time waiting by uploading the footage to his computer, but he has yet to watch it. That’s his and Jeremy’s thing—they always watch the footage together, no matter what.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Jeremy insists with an annoyed huff as he thumbs through Twitter. “Did you tweet out anything? I’m seeing a lot of people freaking out for the next episode.”

“I tweeted that if you’re okay it going up, the next episode is going to be a wild ride.” Michael replies as he moves to sit on the edge of the hospital bed beside Jeremy, setting the laptop up in way where both can see it.

“We didn’t go through all that to not upload this,” Jeremy spits out as Michael pulls up the footage. “Press play. I’m ready.”  

Shaking his head, Michael starts the video and leans back, shoulder brushing against Jeremy’s as the two narrow their eyes to the small laptop screen.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write some type of Buzzfeed Unsolved AU, and one of the best people I know delivered with a prompt on Tumblr. 
> 
> I hope you guys like it!


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